Withering Humanity
by JEZZHYE
Summary: As the Night Hunter goes on a casual hunt, he stumbles upon three nasty thugs and an unusual child which he ends up saving. He doesn't know why he can't kill the child like any other human. A small one-shot in which the Hunter reflects the unfortunately withering humanity on our planet.


**Soooo hello there, welcome to my new but tiny one shot.**

**The story and the Hunter's behavior might be off, but I thought it's a nice and sweet idea to write about it anyway. Thanks to my friend for helping me pick a tiny storyline for the story. I obviously continue to apologize for grammar mistakes or misspelled words, this one is a bit rushed.**

**But enough talking, on to the story. Enjoy.**

* * *

It was shortly after sunset as three of Rais' last remaining thugs break into a safe place of a small family, robbing them for supplies. They broke in through the window, two equipped with a khopesh and the other with a scavenged military rifle. The man with the military rifle suddenly points it at the mother who grabs her child protectively behind her, instructing her to a corner. Despite the fact that she has to put her arms on the back of her head, she still keeps her child behind her while the others scavenge the tiny apartment for something useful. She begs them for mercy, so leave them alone, but none of them listens. She looks up at the man with pleading, tearful eyes, but he's unfazed by it.

And when they finish, they give him their made-up signal. He looks back to her with cold eyes before killing her with a clean shot through her forehead.

The child suddenly starts screaming with a high-pitched voice, fleeing in any random direction she first sees. The man misses the shot and runs after it, ignoring the protesting colleagues.

She continues to scream and run, takes sharp turns, throws furniture over behind her and searches for a place to hide. He's too slow to follow her but catches a short glimpse of where she's running to.

Arriving in her mother's bedroom, she wastes no time to hide in the closet.

* * *

Somewhere close to the apartment however lurks the emperor of the entire quarantine zone, the Night Hunter. As he lurks on the rooftops for fresh prey, his sensitive ears pick up the continuous high-pitched screams and his attention is immediately locked to it. He follows the noise as he tendrils from rooftop to rooftop, breathing heavily like the hungry monster he is.

He doesn't take long to arrive there and jump through the broken window, landing swiftly on the floor of the living and kitchen room, surprising the two colleagues. They start to scream so loudly that it makes the Hunter flinch uncomfortably, and he roars aggressively at them before pouncing the one on the right. He doesn't waste any time to bite into his victim's neck and tear it apart, leaving the colleague partially alive and choking. The colleague weakly reaches up to his throat with his arms, choking even more as he touches the fatal wound.

Meanwhile the other colleague takes out his UV flashlight with extremely shaking hands, shining it at the Hunter as he gets off his slowly dying colleague. The Hunter starts to shriek in pain and back up drastically against the wall as the light hits his skin, arms shielding his eyes but it doesn't help much.

* * *

Back in the child's mother's room, the man searched for the hidden child. He tugs off the pillows and blankets from the bed, drags out shelf boxes while making a whole mess in the room. However, he gets distracted as he hears the Hunter's roar from the nearby room and temporarily forgets the child. Thinking about his two colleagues, he goes back to the living and kitchen room as he is greeted with a gruesome sight. Both of his colleagues lie dead on the ground, one having died from blood loss and the other from the attack of the Night Hunter.

He looks at the spiky, bony and fleshy back of the monster who's still sitting on his dead colleague, eating his flesh in all silence. He's too shocked and paralyzed to move, dropping the rifle on the ground.

The Hunter picked up the noise and flinches his head in light speed towards him, red and orange eyes staring deep into his soul. For a short second, the man notices how he also had spiky bones emerging from his skull, almost looking like a crown.

He doesn't get a good feeling at the sight and goes for the run, screaming in fear as tears glimmer in his slightly red eyes. He doesn't come far though as the Hunter quickly catches up with him, tackling him hard to the ground.

Lying on his stomach, he can't fully look at the monster on him. The Hunter doesn't do anything though, he just sits there and breaths heavily, looking at his trapped prey. The man feels his stare.

And suddenly, so suddenly that the man doesn't even realize it, it's over. The Hunter slowly retracts his hand from the man's back, holding the man's heart. It's dripping and leaking a lot of blood, drippling down the Hunter's left arm as he takes the delicious sight in. He licks his lips before he consumes it and swallows it whole.

Satisfied, he gets off of the man. He remembers hearing a child screaming but he hasn't faced a child in here yet, so he goes on to search for the child.

He enters the child's room first, lifting pillows, blankets and all other objects to spot it but with no luck of finding it. To be sure once more, he goes on all fours to look under the bed and gets up again as he finds nothing but some toys.

He then leaves the room, going to the mother's room. He's greeted with a mess and doesn't check twice, knowing that probably that bastard searched for it. The only thing left was the closet and he opens both wooden closet doors.

There he looks down on a little child, about 8 years old. Her eyes are firmly closed and her cheeks are wet from tears as she is hunched up in the closet, hugging her knees in fear.

And the moment she opens her red eyes, the two stare into each other's soul. She doesn't start screaming, he doesn't leap for her.

He wonders why she doesn't start screaming but instead looks so curiously and excitedly into his eyes. But for her it's nothing new, she always understood zombies better than anyone else. She spent a lot of her time studying zombies and even went up close to them, although she rarely did that as she was afraid to get caught of her mother. However the zombies never attacked her as she understood their pain, their silent suffering and let her be, knowing that she won't hurt them. And so does the Hunter, although he never fears anyone of attacking him anyway.

The eye contact is short but the Hunter knows that for some reason he can't kill the child. He doesn't recognize the feeling he has, and it gets even worse as she leaps onto his left leg, hugging it. _Thank you. _He hears her thoughts. _Thank you for saving my life._

* * *

"There's a child outside, open the gates!" echoes a woman's voice who stood on the third floor balcony of an old car station.

The gates suddenly open and the child enters, all fear in her face vanished and replaced by a huge grin. People rush to her, crouch down to her and check her over for injuries while they ask her if everything's alright. Jaffar looks from afar as he was leaning on the wall of his outpost. He studies the girl closely and only he hears the Hunter's roar in the close distance, roughly getting a theory of what might have happened. _Seems like not all zombies are heartless, mindless monsters._

**The End**


End file.
